Weston-super-Mare Airport
| RAF Weston-super-Mare | |
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| Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England | |
The main runway photographed in 2007
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 RAF Weston-super-Mare
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| Coordinates | 51°20′16″N 2°56′31″W / 51.3379°N 2.9419°W |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1936 |
RAF Weston-super-Mare was a Royal Air Force station on a civilian airfield in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England.
It was set up as a municipal civilian airport in the 1930s before being taken over by the RAF in World War II for training and technical services. It was also the site of an aircraft production facility. In the postwar period it was used by Westland Helicopters. It is now home to the Helicopter Museum.
The airport was started by Weston-super-Mare Urban District Council in the 1930s. Sir Alan Cobham had encouraged local authorities to build airfields as part of his 'Municipal Aerodromes Scheme' in the late 1920s. In May 1936, scheduled air services were started by Railway Air Services using the de Havilland Dragon and de Havilland Express to fly from Plymouth to Haldon, then across the Bristol Channel to Cardiff Municipal Airport before recrossing the Bristol Channel to Weston and then flying on to Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport. The distance from Cardiff to Weston is less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) across the water, however the road journey would have been around 150 kilometres (93 mi) or a trip on the Aust Ferry before the Severn Bridge opened in 1966, although the Severn Tunnel enabled rail travel between South Gloucestershire and South Wales.
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